


Dinner for One

by capnhelarctos



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Drabble Collection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 12:49:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3530039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capnhelarctos/pseuds/capnhelarctos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil happens upon a New York Times article and asks Carlos, "Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dinner for One

The scientist sat back against the tall rock he was using as refuge from the wind, and put a hand to his chin. His brow furrowed and a few locks of his hair settled across his pensive face. He pushed thick-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose.

In Night Vale, Cecil shifted a bit against the couch. While Carlos was contemplating the question he just asked, the radio host thought back on the events of the day.

One of the interns, having climbed out of the dark chasm at the far end of the staff break room, had spent the afternoon in Cecil’s recording booth, alternating between howling and clawing at the walls, and loudly and frantically reciting a specific bank of questions in Cecil’s direction.

“16. What do you value most in a friendship? 17. What is your most treasured memory? 18. What is your most terrible memory? 19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?”

Interns ranting wildly and thrashing their bodies about was a normal enough occurrence for the station. When met with the terrible fate of workplace responsibilities, many of these youths took to all manner of pouting and protest. Cecil knew better than to try to answer the inquiries, though he wasn’t given much of a choice- they were shouted one after another, without breaks, in what seemed like an ever-deepening, feral tone of voice.

And all at once, the intern’s babbling ceased, and they climbed atop Cecil’s desk, eyes wide and slightly yellowed, their harrowed gaze locking with his bemused one. The radio host waited for the younger person to wrap up their performance, raising an eyebrow, but the intern just stared intently into his eyes, wordless. Cecil cleared his throat and swiveled the chair in order to get back to editing a “word from our sponsors” segment but the intern maneuvered themself so they never left his field of vision, now sprawled awkwardly across the desk.

Tired, and not particularly moved by this intrusion, Cecil simply sat, hoping to wait out his eager underling. He felt one minute, maybe two, pass without either of them moving or blinking. He raised an eyebrow and began, “Can I help you with some--” before the entire structure seemed to buck sideways, as though thrown from a rodeo bull, and the intern crashed face-first into the floor while Cecil’s chair fell backward at the opposite angle. A fiery, low series of tones rang out from Station Management’s door, and the younger person immediately scrambled out the door, gesturing wildly and shrieking.

Cecil sighed, got up from the floor and dusted himself off. While he set the chair back into an upright position, he noticed a tattered sheet of magazine paper near the door. He vaguely recognized the content as the intern’s manic ramblings from earlier. When he turned the paper over, he saw the headline: “The 36 Questions that Lead to Love.” He quickly skimmed the article and came to understand, to his dismay, that these questions came from a psychologist who claimed that they, along with four minutes of maintained eye contact, were the keys to falling in love with someone. He nervously pulled at his collar and was grateful that Station Management insisted on a No Sexual Tension policy, though it was sometimes hard to navigate when he called Carlos for his expert Science advice during the broadcast. The tension had become worse since Carlos became trapped - no, he had promised he wouldn’t phrase it that way anymore - since Carlos had decided to stay in the Desert Otherworld, though not only in a sexual sense.

When he was being honest with himself, when he found himself tear-stained and clutching his boyfriend’s pillow, trying to take in what was left of his scent, he knew that their relationship had taken a strange turn since the day all the Old Oak Doors stopped opening out to the otherworld. That the distance between him and the scientist was becoming more than just physical, geographical. What had been hours-long conversations about how much they missed one another, and active plans for finding a way back to Night Vale, had turned into brief updates on the past day’s, or days’, events, and a seemingly-rote exchange of “I love yous” before setting off to work. It wore on Cecil, and worried him in a way he couldn’t deny.

Once home, he read the torn article thoroughly, and decided to conveniently ignore the fact that his intern was attempting to seduce him and instead focus on using this system of questions to affect his own love life. If the love between he and Carlos was waning, maybe this would be the thing to bring them back together again.

Of course, this experiment was not without its hangups. For one, the test was to be taken with both parties in the same room. While Carlos was able to occasionally project a vision of himself back into Night Vale, the amount of time was limited, and the pair decided to reserve that option for the direst of situations. They could Snapchat, which Cecil was especially fond of, but as the questions asked for almost exclusively verbal answers as well as body language, the radio host gave up on the idea of Carlos sending him at least 36 photos of his perfect hair, teeth, and other sections Cecil believed to be perfect, but did not talk about on the radio. He lingered on that train of thought a long moment, smirking to himself before coming back to the moment at hand. The other obstacle was the four minutes of sustained eye contact at the end. It seemed like FaceTime was likely his best bet, if he hoped that this experiment might work. He grabbed a blanket, settled into the couch, and called up the Scientist.

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

“Who would I want as a dinner guest? That is a tough one…. but Cecil, you know I don’t really think of ‘dinner’ as anything special. My body needs fuel, and for that reason, I consume nutrients at regular intervals. There is no ceremony or meaning involved. I simply calm the physical hunger I am experiencing at that moment and then return to my experiments. I can’t say that I’ve ever had a guest for dinner, and so I don’t know if I think the question is valid. And if it is invalid, it is not something I can venture, for reasons of Science.”

This was not the start that Cecil was looking for. They were only on the first question, and Carlos had explained his way out of giving a “real” answer, like Helen Hunt or Sean Penn. He was not sure why he had suddenly thought of the two actors, but then attributed it to the fact that he had spoken about the library recently, and the treasure trove of biographies it held. He shook his head, sighing a moment, forcing a weak smile back at his beloved.

“I mean, I know, it’s sort of an invalid question, but I thought just, wouldn’t it be fun to talk about it? I’m just interested in your answer,” the host replied, trying to sound casual. He shivered despite himself. Nights in the desert were cold indeed, and he found himself wishing that Khoshekh were still floating around the apartment, to give him some measure of warmth or comfort.

“It’s hard to give an answer to a question that doesn’t add up. I barely designate any differences with my meals, in the first place, and so I couldn’t say what sort of guest this person was, if I were to have them. And that second part, ‘guest.’ Are they staying for a prolonged period? Did we arrange something before this meal took place? In what ways other than meal-sharing am I beholden to them? What if they don’t like my choice of meal? There are so many variables… I don’t know how someone could sort through them all. How have you, Cecil? What would your answer to this question be?”

His boyfriend could be fairly single-minded when it came to tasks, particularly those that related to his work with Science, and that tendency had really only worsened with the time he spent in the Desert Otherworld. He couldn’t help but feel frustrated that he couldn’t answer what seemed like a simple, straightforward question. He then noticed that Carlos kept turning to the left and making comments to someone off-camera, and embers within Cecil came alive, his voice slowly climbing higher in pitch as he spoke.

“I thought a long while on this, since it is the first question and I have no choice but to consider any written list in the order it is written, so says the City Council. And thus my answer to this question, I thought at first, could be all manner of people, since it is anyone, any person living or dead within existence. But I have to say this, in that given the choice of anyone in the world,” he looked off to the side, as though he couldn’t say this sort of raw feeling while looking at the source that aroused it.

“My dinner guest would still be you, Carlos. You. More than anyone else, I want you to be in our home, sitting at our table. I want to be able to set down a meal in front of you after a long day at the lab. I want to hear you compliment my being able to make such a great dish without using wheat or what byproducts. I want you to-” Cecil’s voice started cracking, his face scrunching up as tears escaped his eyes, “-to walk up behind me and put your arms around me as I start the dishes. I just want you to want to touch me, Carlos. You barely talk about coming home anymore. You’ve been so far away for so long and I am here in this house just utterly alone, day after day, night after night. Does that mean anything to you?” Sniffling and wiping his eyes, Cecil looked at the screen, breath ragged, to realize that the camera was facing the strange sky of the Desert Otherworld.

It took a full minute and half for Carlos to return, his voice full of excitement, as he explained, “Sorry Cecil, I put down my phone when Doug came by to show me this really interesting rock he found earlier today out in the desert. It took him, Aisha and several others to bring it back here, it’s massive! It came in as 7 Standard Fatality Units on the danger meter. It’s so exciting. I have so many ideas for experiments to do on it. So much to do. I have to go, let’s talk later, okay? Goodbye!”

The screen went black, and returned to the home menu. Cecil just stared at his phone a long time without moving. He took in a single deep breath, held it and let it out, and then scrolled around his phone a moment before putting it to his ear, sniffling once through the dial tone before giving his greeting in a tone nearly as smooth as the one he used for the radio broadcast.

“Hey, Earl. It's Cecil. Listen, have you had dinner?”


End file.
